Well, for starters, 'nanpa n' is an ordinal, "nth" for every number expression. The subtraction from the left, add from the right approach is ingenious and, because it has only limited use, much better than the usual multiply from the left idea. There remain the problems that his gets very long and repetitive and that every large number system ever proposed has been rejected -- after a lot more criticism. Thanks for joining this decade and more discussion.

examples from rowa.giso.de are repetitive (luka luka... & tu tu...)examples from nd-notation repeat the word "nanpa". This type of repetition helps to understand speed talk by accent on word "nanpa". Make pauses and change an intonation on the "nanpa" and you will have "pona" for your "kute". Try:

Poorly, if at all. These various issues have not been explored in any detail, if at all.Your proposals all have to be viewed against the background of the existing system, clunky as it may be. So any change must be clearly different in an obvious way. As noted, 'nanpa' with numbers already has a use different from this one and strings of digits already have a use. The only variation that may work here is changing the order of digits, putting a smaller one before a larger. You use this for subtraction in fixed patterns to get the ten decimal digits, not, apparently for general mathematics yet. This might work (it seems sounder that using the shift for multiplication generally, which gets into grouping problem early on). Using it only with 'luka' as the second element opens the pattern up for further developments, including in the way you suggest, although going beyond 1/2 doesn't seem easy in a general way. But the use of 'nanpa' to separate decimal places creates an unacceptable (even more than tampering with the current number system) change. Some other word might work, however. As I said, this discussion is almost as old as tp and has been through countless variations, all of them failing to catch hold. Thank you for this, which is a step forward.

Today I propose to evaluate a way to express such a mathematical concept as a fraction. To do this we should use a templet "nanpa X" and an analogy with a pregnancy. First month of pregnancy is 1/9, 2d -- 2/9... to 9/9. So:

nanpa mije -- numerator

nanpa meli -- denominator

When the numerator becomes more than the denominator (10/9), we receive a whole number (like a new baby).

So 'nanpa mije wan nanpa meli luka wan luka' = 1/9? It is terribly long-winded, but any solution within existing tp is bound to be. still, this is the most I have seen done with fractions in a while, so thanks for the additions. Don't get you hopes up for any changes, however; it's been fifteen years with no progress (indeed a regress, since we lost 'tuli' and 'po').

This has been chewed over for ten years I've been here and was old when I arrived, so tresimal systems have been worked out (and roundly hated, for obvious reasons) and 4, 5, and 7, 8, and, of course 10 (and 12 and 16 and 20 and 60) have been discussed, with no visible change whatsoever. And all the various other ways of combining numbers other than adding them. And a dozen (underestimate) ways of naming the numbers above two.The separate,but obviously related, problem of reading strings of decimal digit (telephone numbers, credit card numbers, PINs, SSNs and so on throughout the bureaucracy) has also been debated and and left in the dirt many times -- and it doesn't even count as part of tp, being about unofficial words. Big numbers are the area of the most noise for the longest time with the least accomplished (Sonja added 'mute' = 20 and 'ale' = 100, which actually made matters worse) in all of tp. You can read the records in the forum (mainly jan nasa, but most other groups at some time or other) and on the old list and facebook, reddit and g+. No surprises and no results.By the way, we threw away words (not very good ones, to be sure), for 3 and 4 ('tuli' and 'po') fairly early on (before my time, anyhow).

Thanks janKipo. In that case I won't pursue the issue at this point, beyond saying that I can see the philosophical desire to keep numbers difficult to discuss - except when it interferes with helping other people. If someone needs 25 cans of soup, they should be able to ask for them.

Of course, international decimal digits can be quoted in any language.

In writing, of course, but not in speech, and language is primarily speech, even when it is most commonly written. 25 is not much of a problem in tp; a thousand certainly is. Of course, the idea was that the community of speakers would live such simple lives that things in that quantity would not be needed. But reality has intervened to some extent. We can manage quite a bit without numbers at all and some more with just a few rather complicated ones, but we reach our limits rather quickly in dealing with the real world: putting $17.93 on credit card 1234 5678 9009 8765 (security 432, expiration 10/20) while calling 1-123-456-7890 to tell the boss we have closed on 0978-65432-1 at the agreed price of $164,948.78 to be filled by 10-9-15. Part of this is just vocabulary of course, assigning words from the existing stock to mean dollars and cents and various pieces of number strings. But all that is inherently flawed from a contemporary perspective.